Flack Ops

Friday, August 11, 2017

I’ve been a PR flack for 30 years
and a Glock owner for just a few months. In fact, my Glock 19 is the first
firearm I’ve ever purchased. But after witnessing firsthand the potential public
relations crisis surrounding the Sig Sauer P320 semi-automatic pistol, I’ve decided
that I’m going to buy a Sig.

I didn’t make this
decision lightly. (I understand from reading
countless firearms forums that allegiance to a firearm brand can rival
allegiance to a beloved sports franchise.) But I’ve read enough to know that
Sig Sauer firearms in general, and the P320 specifically, are among the safest
handguns on the market today. And Sig’s handling of this situation tells me
that they care as much about the safety and integrity of their products as they
do about their sterling reputation. And they are willing to do whatever it
takes to preserve both.

Unless you’ve been wearing your ear protectors all
week, you’ve heard about a video that shows the Sig P320 firing when dropped at
a certain angle. Omaha Outdoors, which produced the video, was quick to point
out that the P320 and all of Sig Sauer firearms meets and exceeds all U.S.
standards for safety, including the American National Standards Institute
(ANSI) and Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute, Inc. (SAAMI).
But the fact is, at a very specific angle, the P320 does appear to fire when dropped.

Frightening stuff, right? Not really. First, as Sig
points out on page 25 of the P320 owner’s manual, “Although extremely unlikely,
it is still possible for any loaded firearm to discharge when dropped.” That includes
Sig, Beretta, Ruger, even my Glock.

In fact, Glock has its own problems associated with
having to depress the
trigger when disassembling it—an issue that the P320 owner never has to
worry about. Does that mean I’m going to stop firing my Glock? Not likely. I’ll
just be extra careful when I take it apart.

And other pistols have other safety “issues” that
the P320 does not. Some 1911 owners, for example, often install extremely light
triggers to improve accuracy which, while rare, can lead to unintended
discharges and serious legal consequences—issues
that P320 owners simply do not have to worry about.

Looking at this issue from a PR perspective, I was really impressed with the way that
leading firearms bloggers and correspondents comported themselves. As someone
who is brand new to this community, I saw an amazing amount of fact-based,
informative reporting on what could have been a volatile issue.

Unlike the kind of
hysterical and intentionally misleading stories you often find in the general
media, the firearm community showcased their expertise and rationality. Jeremy
S. over at The Truth About Guns did a great
article explaining the mechanics behind how the P320 failed
the drop test as well as how Sig was going to fix the problem. Soldier Systems’ piece on how Sig tests
their firearms was very helpful for a newbie like myself to understand exactly
what was going on. And Mark Keefe at the American
Rifleman wrote a great
piece putting the P320 “sharknado” of concern into
perspective while providing helpful context. He even wryly reminds us that “The first lesson is that
dropping guns, regardless of on what axis, is bad.”

The fact is guns are inherently dangerous, which is why all responsible gun owners practice safe gun handling. And that’s also why responsible gun owners have made Sig Sauer one of the most popular firearms company on the planet—because compared to other leading gun manufacturers, their safety record is outstanding.

I’m looking forward to hearing the details of the Sig P320 voluntary upgrade on Monday. In the meantime, I plan to keep calm and Sig on.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Did the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company really publicly
vow to “not engage in price gouging actions or predatory pricing”?

Yes, Allergan president and CEO Brent Saunders really did,
in a blog that he posted on the company’s website this morning.

When I learned about the blog post from an
article on TheStreet.com, I jumped to the post
itself looking for fodder for a piece I planned to write about the dangers
of making false promises in the digital age. I mean, we live in the era of the 300
EpiPen, where you have to increase the price of your pharmaceutical
products by 4,000
percent before anybody pays attention to you. There was no way Allergan’s
CEO promised to “take price increases no more than once per year and, when we
do, they will be limited to single-digit percentage increases.”

But he did. And he encouraged his CEO peers to do the same.

And while this is fascinating in itself and good news for
shareholders (Allergan
closed up 1.34%), what I found most intriguing about Saunders’ blog post is
that it was a textbook example (or would that be a “kindle example” now) of
effective 21st century communications.

Here are four lessons you need to learn from one of the most
unlikely blog posts on the Internet today.

You have to have
something significant to say. I’ll admit I struggled a bit as I waded
through the first few paragraphs of corporate-speak about “commitment to
innovation, access and responsible pricing ideals” before I got to “we will
limit price increases.” But then I was hooked.

You have to be
candid. Check this out. Not only does Saunders vow that, “We will not
engage in the practice of taking major price increases without corresponding
cost increases as our products near patent expiration,” but he accentuates the
point by admitting they have done just
that in the past. “While we have participated in this industry practice in
the past, we will stop this practice going forward.” That’s gold, Jerry! GOLD!

It helps to speak
from the heart. I’m sure Saunders’ post had to get cleared by Legal, but it
still contains the language of a man who is being honest. One small example: “I
don’t like what is happening, and despite the fact that it is hard to speak out
publicly on this, now is the time to take action to spell out what this social
contract means to me.”

Deliver a call
to action. A good blog post inspires. A great one directs people to act. And
Saunders does just that. “For our industry to remain a vibrant and important
part of the healthcare ecosystem, Allergan commits to this social contract and
I encourage others to formulate their own self-policing actions.”

It’s not often that I am impressed by a corporate blog post,
especially one signed by the CEO. But
this one is worth the read.

Saturday, June 11, 2016

At 11:02 a.m. on May 25, Millennial Ashley Parker, a New York Times reporter embedded with the Clinton campaign, tweeted: “Young embed (born in ’91!) next to me: What the hell is Whitewater?! [Begins Googling].”

Minutes later, Baby Boomer Karen Tumulty, the Washington Post’s national political correspondent, responded: “SMH. Seriously, youth is not an excuse. You are covering this candidate. READ A BOOK, PEOPLE.”

But as entertaining as the dust-up was, the fact is there was no reason Jimmy Olsen, cub reporter and child of the digital age, should have heard of Whitewater. Just as there is no reason we relics of the Huntley-Brinkley era (google it) shouldn’t have.

We had no choice … and he had no need.

We old dogs got our news dolloped out to us on a strict schedule by a handful of “trusted” news hounds. When Whitewater was declared news, we wolfed down Whitewater stories every weekday night at 6:30/5:30 Central.

Our reporter pup and his millennial pack, on the other hand, are grazers who consume their news all day long from countless sources. They don’t have many cultural touch stones catalogued in their heads for two reasons. 1. With so many news outlets today, it takes a monumental story indeed to achieve “cultural touch stone” status. And 2., if they do need to learn about a historic news item, they know how to find everything they need.

So if you plan to communicate with Millennials, you need to understand that their way of consuming information is very different from ours. You can’t simply shout “news treat!” and expect them to come running. You’ve got to create content that interests them, and then put it where they can sniff it out themselves.

Here are four simple ways to do just that:

Discover your passionate audience. You need to identify who really cares about your issues. If your strategic communications plan calls for you to target “women 35 to 54,” you’re not really targeting anybody. To discover your passionate audience, you have to forget size and focus instead on common interest. I can guarantee you that there are plenty of people you’ve never even heard of who are passionate about some aspect of your organization’s quest. Your job is to discover who they are so they can discover who you are.

Learn where the Venn diagram of your story overlaps with their interests. Nobody cares about every aspect of your organization’s mission, except your CEO. And he may be jiving, too. To understand what your audience wants from you, you have to understand what aspects of your quest people care about enough to talk about. To do that, search Twitter using terms that reflect your quest and see who is tweeting (and re-tweeting) about them. Or visit the sites that cover issues directly and indirectly related to your quest and read the comments section see who has dropped by.

Keep the relationship alive. When you have found your audience, connect with them on social platforms, subscribe to their blogs, react to their posts, react to their influencers’ posts, comment on articles that they are reacting to. (You’ll recognize the more fruitful avenues by the enormous number of “shares” and “likes.”) In short, develop a genuine relationship with your audience.

The power of the “share.” Nothing pleases a blogger more than someone sharing her post. If you find interesting content, share it. But don’t just put it on your website, because nobody goes there—not even you, if we’re being honest about it. Instead, scotch tape it to the Internet’s refrigerator—Facebook, LinkedIn and other social platforms.

It will take effort to build your audience. And your metrics will not be nearly as impressive as the proverbial “three billion impressions,” which as we all know is the teacup poodle of metrics: fascinating but absolutely useless. But this investment will result in a dependable, useful, and exponentially more engaged audience—a King Shepherd of an audience, if you will. And that will make all the difference.

Thursday, June 9, 2016

Welcome aboard! You represent the 96th nation to visit this little shake shack! Come on in and meet all the folks!! There're are cold beers in the fridge and some M&Ms and pretzels on the coffee table. Mind the iguana. He tends to snap at strangers.

I discovered
the secret to effective online communication before Mark Zuckerberg lost all
his milk teeth.

It was in
the mid-1990s and my new boss, Rick Berman, was not pleased with my progress in
generating media coverage of an economic study entitled, “Effects of Minimum
Wages on Teenage Employment, Enrollment and Idleness.” I just couldn’t seem to
craft a press release that made that topic interesting to reporters. Imagine
that.

Following
yet another of his increasingly menacing pep-threats, I locked myself in my
office, thought back to my days as a reporter at The Red Bank Register, and
tried to imagine what might make me pick up the phone and call the guy flacking
this report. Then I drew my “press release.”

It was a
mock-up of the faux resume of one “Les Likely,” an unremarkable teenager with a
spotty work history and a very poor command of the English language. I added a
coffee-cup ring stain in the corner and a red stenciled “REJECT” stamp in the
middle of it and had the graphics department lay out and print 150 copies. Then
I sent them to my media list with this short note attached: “Les Likely is
about to lose his job again. Give me a call and I’ll tell you why.”

And they
called. And I never wrote a traditional release again.

The lesson I
learned then—which I use to this day—is this: before delivering any message, I
must first determine exactly what it is about what I have to say that could
possibly be of interest to my audience.

And as
important as that lesson was in the 1990s, it is imperative today. You see, the
days of making declarations in your best Ted Baxter voice and expecting the
fish to bite are over. In fact, the more Ted Baxter-y you are the less likely
you are to connect with your audiences.

Of course,
there are inherent risks whenever you color outside the lines, but the benefits
of creativity

are worth the occasional ding, such as that time my laminated
dollar-bill plan got us on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, above the
fold. I’ll let them recount it, since they tell it best:

We were
intrigued by The Employment Policies Institute's latest cost-saving endeavor.
To protest President Clinton's proposed minimum wage increase of $1 an hour,
the Washington, D.C., business-funded think tank mailed laminated $1 bills to
300 reporters at various news outlets. According to our calculations, the cost
of that little stunt could've furnished a minimum-wage earner with more than
two months of the boosted hourly rate.

It’s true
that my heart stopped beating briefly when I read the Journal that morning. But
that hit actually lit up the phones with calls from other reporters interested
in the study, demonstrating once again that any press is good press.

Monday, March 21, 2016

The secret to successful conflict is knowing what you want to get out of the engagement before the opening bell.

Some time ago, my then local dry cleaner shredded the back panel of two of my dress shirts. I’m not talking about a slight tear. I mean this was full post-bear-mauling Leo DiCaprio. Obviously, something went very wrong in the back room of the Bradlee Dry Cleaners.

But when I brought them back for restitution—or at the very least a heartfelt apology—the proprietor said that I had dropped them off in that condition.

I went Hulk-O-Rama so fast and furiously that I popped the collar button off the shirt I was wearing.

Didn’t matter. He wasn’t budging. As I walked out in defeat (three shirts to the wind, as it were), I vowed never to step foot in that shop again! Nine years later, they went out of business, which I like to think I had some small hand in.

Fast forward to last week when, running late for a breakfast meeting, I saw that my freshly dry-cleaned shirt had a large grease stain running down the left sleeve from the elbow to the cuff. I grabbed a second shirt and it had a stain in the same pattern on the same arm.

Was I angry? You betcha. But this time I was ready. All I wanted from my dry cleaner was an acknowledgement that they stained my shirts. And in order to get that, I took the issue off the table.

“Hey, these two shirts both came back with these identical stains.”

“Hmmmm.”

“Now, I’m not sure how they got there, but I would imagine it happened during the dry cleaning process. It’s possible, of course, that I brought them in with these stains.”

“Hmmmm.”

“It doesn’t matter how it happened, really. I just wanted to bring it to your attention in case you had a mechanical problem that you should check on before this happens to someone else.”

“I’ll refund the cost of cleaning these two shirts.”

Victory!

Now, if I had centered the conflict on who actually wrecked my shirts, her natural reaction would have been to defend herself. And—once our respective perspectives were established—any forceful argument I made would be met by an equal and opposite forceful argument from her.

Call it Newton’s Third Law of Emotion.

But by setting aside the very point I needed to win—and even interjecting a smidgen of her perspective—I completely de-fanged her opposition. And then I sealed the deal by suggesting that I only brought the issue up out of concern for her other customers. Check and mate.

They may not have paid for the shirts they ruined, but they at least fessed up topossibly having had something to do with it. And that’s gold, Jerry. Gold!

Friday, March 4, 2016

Machines have two primary functions: they perform the task they
were built for or, failing that, they serve as emotionless objects through
which we can vent our pent-up rage and frustration.

Who among us hasn’t wanted to go all Office Space on the company printer? We slam our
car doors, punch parking meters, and throw our remotes against the wall. (You
guys do that, right?) And we take out our aggression without a hint of remorse
because these are victimless drubbings. We’re thrashing machines, not people.

But what if that machine looked a lot like Dave from Shipping
(or at least had Dave’s stumpy-legged gait) and you saw him being tormented by
Rick the floor manager as he was trying to pick up a box? You’d feel some
anxiety. Really, you would. See for yourself, starting at 1:22.

You see what Rick is doing with that hockey stick? It’s inhuman.
Watch as Rick pushes the poor bastard onto his “face” at 2:05 and tell me you
don’t feel anything. You can almost hear what Dave is thinking as he slowly
rises to his foot-pads.

Then, after he pauses to collect himself, you can see Dave
consider and decide against extracting robotic revenge, instead walking slowly
out the door--which he does not slam because, being a robot, he isn’t mad. We
are. At Rick, for tormenting a machine.

It’s a natural response. Even Martin Shkreli would
feel for that robot because it seems human. It’s just how we’re wired.
According to research by
University of Chicago psychologist Nicholas Epley, anthropomorphism “reflects a
deep drive to form social connections, even with objects made of metal and
wire.” And this drive, he found, increases as our sense of social isolation
grows.

And if research from Duke University and the University of
Arizona is any indication, anthropomorphism is going to skyrocket as social
media (ironically) makes us all feel more socially isolated.

So keep that in mind as you try to connect with your audiences.
Rather than speak of the sweeping societal benefit of your organization,
product, or service, describe instead how your organization, product, or service
helps Dave in shipping.

As novelist Richard Price said,
“The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don't write
about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying on the
road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off
the resonance.”